We’re going to have a contest to see who can be the most vulnerable? The most sensitive or sincere?

To find out who among us can best lay bare our soul and play from the heart?

Every year on tour I hear dozens of excellent high school groups, all over the country, investing hours of rehearsal time, polishing the same Duke Ellington charts in preparation for the annual Jazz Hunger Games.

While it’s gratifying to witness Duke’s music being disseminated so widely, I wonder if these young musicians might be better off exploring a larger repertoire of sounds and styles, learning to sight read, listen and improvise.

Of course, there is such a thing as “healthy competition” in the arts. Setting challenges and overcoming them is how we improve.

Competitive, however, is not the correct mindset for quality music-making. This art form is interactive. It’s about listening and openness. Conversation, not competition. ​

Personally, I don’t feel that I’m in competition with other artists. I’m competing with Netflix, spectator sports, video games, social media and all the other distractions that vie for your leisure time, attention and dollars.

I welcome opportunities to work alongside and learn from my betters. I always try to surround myself with talents greater than my own. Art Farmer said “if you’re the smartest cat in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

One time Nicholas Payton dropped by my gig in San Francisco and schooled me on a ballad. It was like a ten-minute graduate seminar on understatement and grace.

This week I had the opportunity to participate in a tribute to one of my longtime heroes, Tom Harrell, along with Joe Lovano, Kenny Werner, Sean Jones, Johnathan Blake, and several other world class musicians, including the man himself, who has never sounded better.

Everyone involved was more capable and experienced than I. It was humbling but thrilling. I learned a lot and felt nothing but love and support in the room. There was no vibe. Everyone was there for Mr. Harrell.

Wynton Marsalis says a cutting session is like a debate. And debates have their place, especially in the classroom. But wouldn’t you really rather have a conversation?

Personally, I think cutting sessions are a drag. Everyone posturing, posing, showing off, going for house. The atmosphere of a cutting session is like a Michael Bay movie full of explosions. I usually end up resenting the audience for enjoying such tripe.

Ask people to name a musical instrument synonymous with film noir, and it’s a safe bet no one will say the flugelhorn, the ax of choice for my man, Dmitri Matheny. It’d be the saxophone, by a landslide. Which is strange, because sax barely figures in scores from the classic era of film noir, roughly 1944-54. Orchestral strings set the tone, in the work of such geniuses as Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity), Franz Waxman (Night and the City), and Roy Webb (Out of the Past).

People hearing that saxophone aren’t wrong, however. It’s an understandable misconception, based on how the elastic notion of noir was integrated and adapted into the cultural bloodstream by crime writers, film and television producers, and jazz musicians. It’s a dark and twisted road that’s led us from The Killers (Rózsa, 1946) to Odds Against Tomorrow (John Lewis, 1959) to Taxi Driver (Bernard Herrmann, 1976) to Mulholland Drive (Angelo Badalamenti, 2001). In the roadhouses along the way, combos and arrangements have constantly changed—but the song has remained the same: you suffer for your desire … so you may as well suffer with style.

Dmitri Matheny and I charted this route years ago when we collaborated on a “Jazz-Noir” film series for SFJAZZ, which drew on our respective knowledge of music and film. I came away from the experience with a keener insight and deeper appreciation of the scoring of many favorite films. If our conspiracy struck the spark for this album, I’m proud of the small role I played and thrilled that you get to reap the benefit. I’m just tickled to be name-checked (between Herb Caen and Tony Bennett!) in the album’s centerpiece, “Crime Scenes,” a 12-minute suite that delves into the sexy and sinister side of San Francisco, featuring some amusingly “hard-boiled” spoken-word poetry, including a dame who will “draw a chalk outline around your heart.” It pays loving, backhanded tribute to my hometown, and local sleuths ranging from Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) to Mike Stone (The Streets of San Francisco).

That’s what I love about Dmitri’s take on noir—it travels the whole route, reaching back to caress the sinuous notes of the venerable “Caravan,” a Juan Tizol composition from 1936 made famous by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, then tracing that sultry promise forward to find Audrey Horne slinking around in shrouded rooms to Badalamenti’s score for Twin Peaks. In these grooves (can’t help it, grew up in a vinyl world), Matheny leads his crack crew through a sonic history of noir, with nods to composers ranging from Harold Arlen to Lalo Schifrin.

The opening “Noir Medley” weaves together unforgettable swatches of scores by Henry Mancini (Touch of Evil), Jerry Goldsmith (Chinatown), David Raksin (Laura), Bernard Herrmann (Vertigo, Taxi Driver) and Harold Arlen (Blues in the Night), and instantly proves that, yes, the flugelhorn can evoke— perfectly—the nocturnal longing of the best noir.

The extra kick in this road trip is the juxtaposition of venerable jazz standards (“Stormy Weather,” “Estate”) with unexpected, underappreciated gems such as John Williams’ gorgeous “The Long Goodbye,” composed for Robert Altman’s 1973 revisionist take on Philip Marlowe, and Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Lady,” from the same year. (If you don’t think “Golden Lady” is noir, revisit the lyrics: the poor sap is dying to sell his soul for his dream girl.)

Other surprises: a haunting version of Polish composer Bronislaw Kaper’s High Wall, the title theme for the 1947 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer noir of the same name, and the band’s jaunty exit with “What Now My Love?” French composer Gilbert Bécaud’s renowned 1961 hit, covered by everyone from Shirley Bassey to Sonny and Cher, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass to Elvis Presley.

Like Haden, Dmitri Matheny is an artist who manages to find beauty blooming in the darkest corners. He’s a good man to have along if you’re planning a long drive through an uncertain night.

—Eddie Muller

Known internationally as the “Czar of Noir,” Eddie Muller is a writer, producer and impresario. He is the founder of the Film Noir Foundation, which rescues and restores at-risk noir films from around the globe, and producer and host of San Francisco’s NOIR CITY, the largest festival of film noir in the world (now with seven satellite festivals around the U.S.). He frequently appears on Turner Classic Movies, and has lectured on film noir at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Ten years ago, Saturday mornings in the old neighborhood,there was always a 45-minute wait at Breakfast Spot #1but you'd get a table right away at Breakfast Spot #2.I'm pleased to report that nothing has changed.And the Yukon Gold Home Fries are everybit as yummy as you remember.

Join us on August 9 at the Sound Room Oakland for an all-star jazz partycelebrating the international release of SAGEBRUSH REBELLION, the new album by Dmitri Matheny!More information about this and other CD release celebrations throughout the USA available here.

Returning to Southern Michigan after our adventures in the Great White North,today I led a workshop at Berkley High School and played a concert atAnn Arbor's celebrated Kerrytown Concert House.

Warmest thanks to founder and artistic director Deanna Relyeafor creating such a beautiful listening room and including us on the KCH schedule.

What a privilege to collaborate with such talents as these:the brilliant young Detroit saxophonist Marcus Elliot,whose debut album I absolutely love;Quad Cities pianist Corey Kendrick, enthusiastically recommended to me by Reggie Thomas;veteran bassist Tom Knific, a world class musician, mentor and friend since my Interlochen days;and rising star Sean Dobbins, that all-too-rare sort of drummer who simmers with quiet intensity,and then—at just the right moment—turns on the swang!

And what an honor to perform for and meet one of my longtime idols, jazz master Marcus Belgrave!

Mr. Belgrave and his lovely wife Joan (a vocalist I knew years ago in San Francisco)are pillars of the Michigan arts community and two of the warmest, most soulful people on the planet.Sassy and I are looking forward to getting together with them again next week.

If I accomplish nothing else on this tour, I did at least survivethe terrifying and humbling (yet thrilling) experience ofplaying 'Stardust' in front of the great Marcus Belgrave.

I've been in residence this week in the music department of South Mountain Community College, giving master classes and rehearsing with the talented musicians in the school's day and evening jazz programs. Tonight we perform in the college's beautiful theater for the SMCC Jazz Festival. The concert is a showcase for the SMCC Jazz and Latin Jazz ensembles. I'll appear as guest soloist with both groups; my quintet (featuring Andrew Gross, Nick Manson, T-Bone Sistrunk and Dom Moio) will headline.

Tomorrow I'll present a jazz improvisation clinic at the ECHS Jazz Festival in South San Francisco, then tomorrow night the Dmitri Matheny Group (featuring Dave Ellis, Matt Clark, Seward McCain and Leon Joyce Jr) performs at the newly renamed California Jazz Conservatory (formerly the Jazzschool) in Berkeley. Hearty congratulations to Susan Muscarella and the CJC faculty on receiving accreditation from the National Association of Schools!

Sunday it's a Melodic Mastery workshop at the CJC, then down to the South Bay for a Monday master class at Los Gatos High School. Upward and onward!